Remove the "nested attributes" feature

[nicolasblanco]

I'm thinking of removing the "nested attributes" feature to stay in the philosophy of a minimalist gem.

To validate nested attributes you can do this easily with an ActiveModel::Model class. Also you can validate the presence of the nested objects using Strong parameters and the require method on the params object.

If you have any opinion on this, please comment!

[adis-io]

Personally I need this feature.

[nicolasblanco]

@adisos : that's great if you like nested attributes. Please be a little more detailed and explain why you cannot or don't want to use the built-in Rails ActiveModel::Model module to validate nested objects?

Why should we reinvent the wheel? Rails philosophy is all about DRY, right?

[adis-io]

I really don't like AM. I'm using Trailblazer for complex forms and also dry-validation. And this gem is really cool for fast development.

[imi56]

This library should not be used to validate a large number of parameters or parameters....
Please define large number.

[ximus]

rails_params is very usefully for validating bodies and url parameters for basic APIs, and so far works quite well. APIs can have more involved input structures than traditional controllers that just render HTML, and it's not rare for data to be nested at more than one level.

This is seems like a primitive feature of any web input validation library and I think it should stay IMO. I think the minimalist philosophy is nice, but I think there is more value in allowing this feature to remain. Also worth noting that it still feels quite minimalist even with recursion

about Strong parameters: it can validate presence, but doesn't help with types and hence quickly becomes useless beyond the basic security contraints it provides.
about ActiveModel: i've found it to be less elegant to use than rails_param. with rails_params, it's trivial to keep the input schema nicely collocated with the controller action, and expressed in more clear and minimal way that AM.